William Deverell

Crime novels are the new beach reads. Here are 11 of the latest mystery page-turners.

MARGARET CANNON

SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL

The Long-Shot Trial, William Deverell (ECW Press, 320 pages) 

This is the latest in the wonderful Arthur Beauchamp series and it’s superb. If, like me, you’ve wondered just how Beauchamp became a lawyer for the lost, Deverell fills in the backstory.

Deverell paces his story beautifully and weaves in some final surprises.

Far be it from me to say whether William Deverell’s THE LONG-SHOT TRIAL (ECW Press, 250 pp., paperback, $21.95), the ninth novel to star the quick-witted defense lawyer Arthur Beauchamp, will be his last; that said, Deverell is 87, and the book is shot through with lament and mourning.

A note from our friends at Black Bond Books:

Please join William Deverell for a reading from The Long-Shot Trial on Wednesday May 15th, 2024 @ 6:30PM - 9:00PM at our Book Warehouse Main St store (4118 Main St, Vancouver) as we launch the newest Arthur Beauchamp thriller.

This will be a double-header, with crime writer Iona Whishaw reading from her latest Lane Winslow mystery - Lightning Strikes the Silence.

Arthur Beauchamp is mortified. A revised biography of his early career as a lawyer paints him as a dissolute womanizer. So he decides to write a memoir to set the record straight as he delves deeply into a headline murder case he fought as a starry-eyed young lawyer in 1966. A trial that seemed bound to mark him as a pathetic loser.

It's easy to read them in order: Click on "Books" on the home page. Begin with Needles (at the bottom) and work your way up.

To follow the Arthur Beauchamp series, begin with The Dance of Shiva (he gets the Best Supporting Actor Award for that one), then skip up to Trial of Passion (Arthur's first Oscar-winning performance), then (as he slowly ages) April Fool (another Oscar), Kill All the Judges, Snow Job,(borth finalists for the Leacock Award), I'll See You in My Dreams, Sing a Worried Song, Whipped, and Stung.

Let me set the scene:

Dashiell, a handsome (and he knows it), jaguar-spotted, green-eyed Bengal cat, is curled on a slip-covered sofa across from me, waiting for me to finish this brief essay and continue our walk. He is a fearless hiker and likes posing on mountain ledges in the nearby Gulf Islands National Park Reserve.

We are in a log cabin, Dashiell and I. It’s my writing studio, and it’s serenaded — seasonally — by songbirds and a gurgling stream and the crackling of wood in my fire. Not to mention the frequent drumming of West Coast rain. Towering firs and cedars surround the cabin, hopefully pumping out enough oxygen to offset the carbon footprint of my not-quite-smokeless Jötul.

These three novels have been reprinted by ECWPress, and are now available in bookstores, on Audible.com and in ebook format on all platforms.

Kill All the Judges and Snow Job were finalists for the Leacock Award and I'll See You in My Dreams was afinalist for the Beat Canadian Crime Novel Award

Review clips below

Click below for a YouTube version of that cocktail hour launch: including my chat about the novel, readings of three passages, a lovely musical interlude by guitar virtuoso Lester Quitzau, a question-and-answer, and some mingling of friends.

David Suzuki, scientist, broadcaster, author, activist. and a founder of the David Suzuki Foundation, has some thoughtful words to say about Stung and about the wilful blindness we as a species suffer over the global climate crisis:

"The great boast of our species is that we are intelligent yet we seem unable to deal with the facts of environmental degradation. Bill Deverell’s Stung provides a powerful insight into why. Read this book and find out!"

In an email to me, he continued:

Breaking news for Beauchamp fans:

I have just inked a contract with my aggressive, proudly Canadian (and obviously shrewd) publisher, ECWPress, to publish in print, online, and audio formats the three Arthur Beauchamp novels that have languished for the last few years in that infernal region known as books-out-of-print.

Kill All the Judges, Snow Job, and I'll See You in My Dreams will appear on bookstore shelves by early autumn, 2021, and, when added to my March release, Stung, will complete the Beauchamp saga to date. (Another is in the oven.)

"A bitingly funny whodunit." Maclean's

"Kill All the Lawyers is clever, amusing, laced with black humour and viciously accurate depictions of lawyers and judges." Toronto Star.

And a 2020 review squib from the New York Journal of Books:

“Filled with biting wit and smart dialogue, with a twist of an ending the diehard mystery reader won’t see coming—and an epilogue featuring the most ironic surprise of all.”

Here's a thoughtful review by the late, great Robin Skelton, one of Canada's foremost poets and teachers of literature: